The actress who survived the Black Lagoon

During a six-decade movie and TV career, Julie Adams starred alongside plenty of handsome leading men. She played opposite Jimmy Stewart in 1952’s Bend of the River, Tyrone Power in the following year’s The Mississippi Gambler, and Elvis Presley in 1965’s Tickle Me. But Adams is best remembered for sharing the screen with a more unusual co-star: the webbed, rubbery monster from 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon. Wearing an elegant one-piece white bathing suit, Adams played Kay Lawrence, a scientific researcher in the Amazon who becomes the merman’s object of desire and is carried screaming to its grotto. Critics dismissed the film as pure schlock, but it made more than $12 million in today’s money at the box office and remains a cult classic. “No matter what you do,” Adams said, “you can act your heart out, but people will always say, ‘Oh, Julie Adams—Creature From the Black Lagoon.’”

Raised in Arkansas, Adams “was crowned Miss Little Rock in 1946,” said the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. She moved to California soon after to pursue a Hollywood career, and in 1949 made her debut in an uncredited role in the gangster flick Red, Hot, and Blue. When Paramount studios discovered Adams could ride a horse, she was cast in a string of quickly made Westerns in 1950. “The six movies were done in five weeks,” she recalled. “I had a difficult time remembering who I was supposed to be. ‘Am I the farm girl this time or the cowgirl?’”

Bigger-budget work followed, said HollywoodReporter.com, and in 1954 Adams “was offered the role that assured her a place in monster-movie history.” She considered turning down Black Lagoon, but feared suspension by Universal, which had invested heavily in her career—as a publicity stunt, the studio had declared her legs “the most perfectly symmetrical in the world” and insured them for $125,000. After her sole creature feature, Adams enjoyed a successful TV career, said The New York Times, appearing in scores of shows including Bonanza, Perry Mason, and Murder She Wrote. Late in life, she embraced Black Lagoon, attending conventions where she was thronged by “monster movie fans seeking autographs.” “Some projects,” Adams said, “just take on a life of their own.”